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| | | | World History timeline |
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| 1940 |
| | | Roger Schutz establishes an ecumenical religious order at Taiz&eachute; in France | |
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| 1940 |
| | | Radar masts along the coasts of Britain give early warning of German air attacks | |
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| 1940 |
| | | John Ford directs Henry Fonda in the film of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath | |
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| 1940 |
| | | Charlie Chaplin ridicules Hitler in The Great Dictator, the first film in which he speaks coherent dialogue | |
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| 1940 |
| | | An assassin sent by Stalin kills the exiled Trotsky in his home in Mexico City | |
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| c. 1940 |
| | | Schoolboys, out hunting, discover paintings in a cave at Lascaux after their dog falls into a hole | |
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| 1940 |
| | | Civilian heroism is rewarded in Britain with a new medal, the George Cross | |
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| 1940 |
| | | Working as an official war artist, Henry Moore creates an iconic series of drawings of Londoners sleeping at night in underground stations | |
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| 1940 |
| | | US author Carson McCullers publishes her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter | |
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| 1940 |
| | | Lord Craigavon (previously James Craig) dies in office after nineteen years as northern Ireland's prime minister | |
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| 1940 |
| | | After his London studio is bombed, Henry Moore moves to Much Hadham, where he works and lives for the rest of his life | |
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| 1940 |
| | | In To the Finland Station Edmund Wilson discusses the development of socialism and revolution, culminating in Lenin and Trotsky | |
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| 1940 |
| | | US choreographer Agnes de Mille creates Black Ritual for American Ballet Theatre | |
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| 1940 |
| | | William Joyce, broadcasting in English from Germany, becomes notorious in Britain as Lord Haw-Haw | |
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| 1940 January 8 |
| | | The ration book is introduced in Britain, at first just for bacon, butter and sugar, but soon also for meat, eggs, tea, milk, cheese, jam, and clothing | |
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| 1940 February 16 |
| | | 303 captured merchant seamen are rescued in a daring British raid on the German supply ship Altmark, in use as a floating prison in a Norwegian fjord | |
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| 1940 March 12 |
| | | The Treaty of Moscow ends the war between the USSR and Finland, after 200,000 Soviet deaths in the three months of hostilities | |
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| 1940 from April 4 |
| | | More than 4000 Polish officers are massacred at Katyń on Stalin's orders | |
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| 1940 April 5 |
| | | Inactivity during the Phoney War prompts Neville Chamberlain to assure the House of Commons that Hitler has 'missed the bus' | |
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| 1940 April 9 |
| | | German ships and marines occupy the harbours of neutral Denmark and Norway | |
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| 1940 April 9 |
| | | The German invasion of Norway includes the world's first airborne assault, with troops arriving by plane to attack the airports of Oslo and Stavanger | |
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| 1940 April 10 |
| | | Allied ships on patrol in the North Sea, soon followed by troops, rush to the defence of Norway | |
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| 1940 May 10 |
| | | German tanks cross the borders into neutral Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium | |
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| 1940 May 10 |
| | | After the German invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium, Winston Churchill replaces Chamberlain as the British prime minister | |
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| 1940 May 10 |
| | | German troops force their way into France through the Ardennes, launching the Battle of France | |
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| 1940 May 11 |
| | | The French rely on the heavily fortified Maginot Line to keep out the Germans, but they outflank it | |
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| 1940 May 12 |
| | | Only two days after crossing the Netherlands border, a German division reaches the coast near Rotterdam | |
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| 1940 May 12 |
| | | Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch government escape just in time to Britain | |
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| 1940 May 13 |
| | | Winston Churchill, in his first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister, offers the nation nothing but 'blood, toil, tears and sweat' | |
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| 1940 May 14 |
| | | The caretaker government of the Netherlands surrenders to the German invaders | |
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| 1940 May 14 |
| | | The Local Defence Volunteers are formed in Britain and are soon given, on Winston Churchill's suggestion, the name Home Guard | |
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| 1940 May |
| | | A German army races west through northern France, aiming to cut off the Allied troops in Belgium | |
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| 1940 May |
| | | Fishing smacks and private launches are enlisted from southern England's coasts and rivers for a rescue mission across the Channel | |
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| 1940 May 19 |
| | | German tanks reach the French coast at Abbeville, nine days after crossing the border from Germany | |
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| 1940 May 26 |
| | | Evacuation begins from Dunkirk, and over the next ten days some 860 vessels ferry troops across the Channel | |
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| 1940 May 27 |
| | | The Belgians surrender to the German armies encircling them north and south | |
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| 1940 June 4 |
| | | Some 340,000 British and French troops have by now been rescued from Dunkirk, but a million Allied soldiers are now prisoners of the Germans | |
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| 1940 June 7 |
| | | The last Allied forces withdraw from Norway, leaving the country entirely in the hands of its German occupiers | |
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| 1940 June 10 |
| | | Mussolini declares war on a France already on the verge of defeat | |
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| 1940 June 10 |
| | | German and Italian planes begin a prolonged assault on the Mediterranean island of Malta | |
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| 1940 June 14 |
| | | June 14 - a German army takes Paris and pushes on further south into the Rhone valley | |
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| 1940 June 16 |
| | | Marshal Pétain, French hero from World War I, becomes France's prime minister | |
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| 1940 June 16 |
| | | Marshal Pétain, as the new premier of France, immediately asks Germany for an armistice | |
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| 1940 June 18 |
| | | Charles de Gaulle broadcasts to the French nation from London, declaring himself the leader of the Free French | |
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| 1919 June 20 |
| | | Mussolini invades France in the last-minute hope of gaining some territory in the armistice settlement | |
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| 1919 June 22 |
| | | Adolf Hitler attends the signing of the armistice with France, in the railway carriage used for the armistice after the German defeat in 1918 | |
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| 1919 June 22 |
| | | The armistice leaves France with the southern part of the country, with a new capital at Vichy | |
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| 1919 June 24 |
| | | A delegation from France, defeated and partly occupied by Germany, signs in Rome an armistice with Mussolini's Italy | |
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| 1919 June 26 |
| | | The British government gives recognition to Charles de Gaulle as official leader of the Free French | |
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| 1940 July |
| | | Increased German U-boat activity after the fall of France launches the crucial Battle of the Atlantic | |
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| 1940 July |
| | | Germany takes control of Romania, to secure the country's rich oil fields | |
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| 1940 July 3 |
| | | British warships bombard the French fleet in harbour at Mers-el-Kébir, in Algeria, killing more than 1250 sailors | |
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| 1940 July 16 |
| | | Hitler orders preparations for the invasion of England, under the codename Operation Sea Lion | |
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| 1940 August 13 |
| | | The Battle of Britain reaches its most intense phase, with 1500 German planes involved in a single day's assault | |
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| 1940 August 20 |
| | | Churchill says of the Battle of Britain pilots that never has so much been owed by so many to so few | |
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| 1940 September 7 |
| | | The first German night-time bombing raid on London signals the start of the Blitz on British cities | |
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| 1940 September 27 |
| | | Germany, Italy and Japan form a Tripartite Pact as a military alliance | |
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| 1940 October |
| | | President Roosevelt, campaigning for a third term, asssures Americans that he will not send their sons to fight in Europe's war | |
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| 1940 October |
| | | The US government provides 50 destroyers to boost the British escort of convoys in the Atlantic | |
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| 1940 October 2 |
| | | After the summer's losses in the air, Hitler orders the effective cancellation of operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Britain | |
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| 1940 October 4 |
| | | Mussolini plans a new Roman empire, reaching like the first one round the entire Mediterranean | |
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| 1940 October 23 |
| | | Moscow appoints Tito to head the Communist Party of Yugoslavia | |
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| 1940 October28 |
| | | Italian troops cross the Albanian border in the hope of a blitzkrieg against Greece | |
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| 1940 October 31 |
| | | The castle at Colditz, adapted as a high-security prisoner-of-war camp, receives 140 Polish officers as its first inmates | |
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| 1940 November 5 |
| | | F.D. Roosevelt wins an unprecedented third US presidential term, albeit it with a considerably reduced share of the vote | |
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| 1940 November 11-12 |
| | | British aircraft sink three Italian battleships at anchor in Taranto harbour | |
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| 1940 November 14-15 |
| | | Coventry suffers a raid of such intensity that the new technique becomes known as carpet bombing | |
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| 1940 November 20 |
| | | Hungary, Romania and Slovakia sign the Tripartite Pact, joining the war on the German side | |
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| 1940 November 25 |
| | | The de Havilland Mosquito, a multi-purpose wooden aeroplane widely used by the RAF in World War II, makes its first flight | |
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| 1940 December 18 |
| | | Adolf Hitler orders preparations to be made for Operation Barbarossa, his planned invasion of the Soviet Union | |
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| 1941 |
| | | British aviator Amy Johnson is reported missing over the Thames estuary when flying on a mission for the Air Ministry | |
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| 1941 |
| | | Scott FitzGerald's final and incomplete novel, The Last Tycoon, is published posthumously | |
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| 1941 |
| | | Greta Garbo receives terrible reviews for Two Faced Woman, which turns out to be her last film and the beginning of a long retirement | |
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| 1941 |
| | | English composer Michael Tippett completes his oratorio A Child of our Time (not performed until 1944) | |
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| 1941 |
| | | Agee and Evans give a warm personal view of America in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men | |
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| 1941 |
| | | Bertolt Brecht's play set in the Thirty Years' War, Mother Courage, has its first performance in Zurich | |
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| c. 1941 |
| | | Henri Matisse, recovering from an operation, develops his technique of gouaches découpées (cut-out patches of painted paper) | |
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| 1941 |
| | | Greek soprano Maria Callas sings her first Tosca, in the opera house in Athens | |
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| 1941 |
| | | The US army invests in a significant new vehicle, placing an order for 16,000 jeeps | |
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| 1941 |
| | | Aung San and some revolutionary colleagues (the Thirty Comrades) receive military training in Japan, aiming to evict the British from Burma | |
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| 1941 |
| | | Australian prime minister Robert Menzies is forced to resign after losing the confidence of his cabinet | |
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| 1941 |
| | | Citizen Kane is written, directed and starred in by 26-year-old Orson Welles | |
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| 1941 |
| | | John Huston, for his first film, directs Humphrey Bogart in the third screen adaptation of The Maltese Falcon | |
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| 1941 |
| | | British author Rebecca West publishes an account of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon | |
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| 1941 |
| | | US author Eudora Welty publishes her first collection of stories, A Curtain of Green | |
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| 1941 |
| | | The US Congress declares war on Japan and President Roosevelt endorses the order | |
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| 1941 January 6 |
| | | President Roosevelt defines to Congress his concept of Four Freedoms – of speech, of worship, from want, from fear | |
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